John,
Leon Clarke was walking to a bodega across from his apartment. Alberta Bagu was crossing the street with a walker. Neftaly Ramierez was cycling home from work. All three of them, and two dozen other New Yorkers in the last decade, were hit and killed by private garbage sanitation trucks.
Unlike our homes and apartment buildings, where the garbage is picked up by the New York City Department of Sanitation, each small business in the city has to contract individually with a private sanitation company to get their trash picked up. And for years, the private sanitation industry has been one of the worst actors in our city’s epidemic of fatal crashes on our streets.
Can you write to your Council Member and ask them to support the Commercial Waste Zones bill and make New York's streets safer?
Every night, thousands of trucks from over 90 different private carting companies crisscross the city to collect trash from New York City’s businesses. One block can have a dozen or more sanitation companies stopping at different storefronts, and one truck can cross all five boroughs on its nightly route. Along the way, these companies are notorious for aggressive driving, running red lights, driving against traffic, and blocking bike lanes.
Passing this bill is the next step in making Vision Zero a reality, but the City Council hasn’t voted on it yet. Click here to send a message to your Council Member today and tell them that street safety can’t wait.
The way this industry operates now isn’t any better for its workers, our local environment, or our local businesses that rely on this service. Many private sanitation companies pay their workers very low wages and make them drive trucks with bad brakes or bald tires on illegal 14-16 hour shifts.They also recycle little of what they pick up, which helps fuel climate change. And they charge small businesses 38% more on average than big businesses while too often providing bad service like missed trash pickups that result in fines for the customer.
Join us and write to your Council Member today to demand that street safety – as well as workers, our environment, and safe, reliable service at a fair price – come before the waste industry’s profits, profits that sometimes come at the cost of New Yorkers’ lives.
Thanks for all that you do.
In solidarity,
Sunshine
